Mamma Don't Take My Kodachrome Away
RIP Kodachrome 1936 - 2010
Apparently those nice bright colors and dreams of summers are a thing of the past. Dwayne’s Photo, the last commercial lab to process Kodachrome film, has accepted its last batch. In this world of digital, Kodachrome’s passing was inevitable – I don’t remember the last roll of any kind of film I put through my old Minolta. But Kodachrome is still a big part of my memories even if it recorded few of my own directly.
It seems like yesterday that I was foraging for rolls of Kodachrome 64, or even 25 in my dad’s storeroom at Erber’s Camera Shop in Champaign, Illinois for avid photographers including Temple Grandin, who I had no real knowledge of at the time except that she was always pleasant and smelled like the livestock she was photographing (no one minded).
When I think about everything we carried there I realize that about 90% of it is now obsolete. I wouldn’t be looking for obscure projector bulbs now, or renting slide projectors and screens. No more heroically rescuing vacation film from cameras who met a sandy or watery end at the beach and won’t let go of their memories. All the bottles of mysterious-looking chemicals and instruments of printmaking are also almost completely extinct.
And the beautiful dinosaurs that captured the images have begun to fade into museum displays and dusty old shelves, waiting to be excavated by people who have never even heard of let alone seen a 110 film cartridge or flash cube for that “pocket camera” that grandma used to have. Ok bad example of a beautiful dinosaur, but a dinosaur nonetheless.
I probably never put more than two rolls of Kodachrome through my own camera, but I’ll still mourn the passing of a legend that captured so many memories, big and small. Will I ever be tortured again by vivid photos of the funky 70s and 80s fashions of my youth as I listen to the whir of the projector fan and the clack clack as the buttons of the corded remote are pushed and the slides fall into view? I’m sure future generations will wonder the same thing about the rush of the motor as the DVD whirls in the drive of their PCs.
Check out Kodak’s memorial to its most iconic film and some of the legendary images it has captured in its 74 year history.
